Cupcake Camp OC

Yesterday, I was one of the judges at Cupcake Camp OC, a gathering of cupcake-lovers to raise money for a good cause--to stop human trafficking.

With The Sweets Truck and Holly, we sampled 56 cupcakes in just two hours from all the amateur submissions. Sounds like a sweet job, but it wasn't a piece of cake ;) When we started, I was chilly from the air conditioned room, but after eating the first 30 cupcakes I was soon sweating sugar.

Eventually, we picked the top 3 in the following categories, the most unique exotic flavor or ingredient, most childhood inspired cupcake and the most Orange County cupcake.

Our picks for the most unique were the moist and sweet ube (purple yam) cupcake, followed by a fresh hibiscus & strawberry cupcake and a passion fruit coconut cupcake with moshi toppings.

We also loved these Orange County inspired In-And-Out cupcakes made of fondant for the cheese and tomato, while green colored coconut shavings were used for lettuce:

For childhood inspired cupcakes, 1st place went to a yummy peanut butter and jelly cupcake. These two shown below were our second and third pics--Small World Churro flavored cupcakes and these sleeping children ones with melted starburst as the blanket.

These didn't taste very popcorn flavored, but look at the presentation and creativity:

I ended up even dreaming about cupcakes that evening.

6 comments

  1. Sweet! (Literally and figuratively, lol)

    I'm amazed at how creative the cupcake makers are. My favorite local place is trying to get on Food Network's Cupcake Wars. I hope they make it.

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  2. I'm glad you are judging by flavor! :) The Cupcake Camp in SF is a lot of fun, but it's usually based on presentation rather than which cupcake actually tasted the best! Ube sounds amazing.

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  3. Your cupcake repertoire continues to expand :)

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  4. Congrats to you, Holly, and Molly for undertaking the task of tasting sooooo many cupcakes! And, I know picking the winners was not easy! We thought many of the amateur cupcakes were just as good, if not better, than the professional entries.

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  5. Wow, I had no idea cupcakes had come so far.

    Back in the day, sprinkles were just fine. :)

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  6. I love dark chocolate. Eat dark chocolate in small quantities. By the way, a holiday today.

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